Throwback Thursday: ‘The Pledge’ by Donald Dewey

Next to cuckolded spouses, middle-aged sons make the worst clients. When they decide one of their parents has been up to something needing a private investigator, they’re three-quarters resentment they haven’t been able to handle a family matter on their own and one-quarter determination not to spend more than tip money for cleaning up their embarrassment. 

Too bad for me, jowly, fortyish Walter Stern was a middle-aged son. In between a morsel here and there about what he kept calling his father’s ‘odd behaviour’, regular shifts of his bulk to let me know I had bad taste in hardback chairs, baleful glances into my living room, second-guessing his choice of a PI operating out of an office-apartment, and oh-so-patient sighs said he could do without my questions when he had already been sport enough just showing up for our appointment.

The gist of Walter’s problem was that his father, Richard Stern, had turned anti-social at the ripe age of 71. I thought that said a lot for Richard Stern’s fortitude, but both Walter and his mother were of another mind. In their view there was nothing at all inevitable about your average okay-just-one-more-for-the-road guy suddenly not wanting to go out with old friends, even down to a corner saloon for a beer. 

And no, none of the obvious explanations applied. Richard Stern’s last physical a month before had been textbook normal. He had never displayed any signs of depression over his mandated retirement as a city bus driver seven years earlier, and he still hit the Viagra a couple of times a month. Maybe he just didn’t like his friends from the saloon anymore? Walter Stern apparently held back that possibility in the interests of sandbagging me: then how, Mister Finley — he thrust out one of his chins and wanted to know — could his father still spend more than an hour on the phone with them when they called?

Mister Finley had to confess he didn’t know how. But what about Mrs Stern? Didn’t she have any hunches about this epic mystery?

Walter cleared his throat the way you usually did when you were about to reprimand a servant for entering a room without knocking. “If she had, do you think I’d be sitting here right now?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be sitting here.”